Victim's brother pushing police to find shooter

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 10, 2008 file photo, Al Gentry holds photos of his brother, who was murdered more than 20 years ago, at his home in Rockwell, N.C. For Al Gentry, time’s running out to find his brother’s killer. After years of chasing leads, he thought he’d found the person responsible for the 1986 murder - an elderly Georgia widow who was married to his brother and left a decades-long trail of five dead husbands in five states. Betty Neumar was charged in 2008 with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in the death of Harold Gentry. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
— AP

FILE - In this Tuesday, June 10, 2008 file photo, Al Gentry holds photos of his brother, who was murdered more than 20 years ago, at his home in Rockwell, N.C. For Al Gentry, time’s running out to find his brother’s killer. After years of chasing leads, he thought he’d found the person responsible for the 1986 murder - an elderly Georgia widow who was married to his brother and left a decades-long trail of five dead husbands in five states. Betty Neumar was charged in 2008 with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in the death of Harold Gentry. (AP Photo/Chuck Burton)
/ AP

ROCKWELL, N.C. 
Al Gentry is running out of time to find his brother's killer.

After years of chasing leads, he thought he'd found the person responsible for the 1986 murder - an elderly Georgia widow who was married to his brother and left a decades-long trail of five dead husbands in five states.

Betty Neumar was charged in 2008 with three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder in the death of Harold Gentry.

But weeks before her trial in 2011, Neumar, 79, died of cancer.

That hasn't stopped Gentry from continuing to press law enforcement authorities for answers. But the stress of living years with the case has taken a toll. In the last year, Gentry's had a heart attack and a stroke, and is tethered to a portable oxygen tank.

"The question I have is, who killed my brother?" said Gentry, 67, of Rockwell, N.C. "That person is still out there. I'm going to fight to my last breath until I find out who killed him."

Stanly County Sheriff Rick Burris said the case is no longer active, even though it's still open.

"We're really at a dead end," Burris said.

Gentry spent much of his adult life pushing law enforcement authorities to solve the slaying. He always believed that Neumar - a diminutive Georgia grandmother with a shock of white hair who operated beauty shops, attended church and raised money for charity - was responsible. The case was finally reopened in January 2008 after he asked Burris, then the newly elected sheriff, to look into it.

When investigators did, they found Neumar's trail of dark secrets.

Authorities discovered Neumar had been married five times since the 1950s and each union ended in her husband's death. Investigators in three states reopened several of the cases but have since closed them.

Burris said his department still wants to solve Harold Gentry's homicide.

"But we don't have any leads," he said. "If we get any new information, we'll investigate. We want to bring closure to Al."

However, Burris and Al Gentry acknowledge that the mysteries in Neumer's past may never be solved.

From the beginning, law enforcement authorities told The Associated Press they had struggled to piece together details of her life because her story kept changing. But interviews, documents and court records provided an outline of her history in North Carolina, Ohio, Florida and Georgia, the states where she was married.

Her first husband was Clarence Malone. They married in Ironton, Ohio, in 1950, but it's unclear when their marriage broke up. They had a son, Gary, who was born in 1952.

Malone remarried twice. He was killed with a gunshot in the back of the head outside his auto shop in a small town southwest of Cleveland in November 1970. His death was ruled a homicide.

Gary was adopted by Neumar's second husband, James Flynn, although it's unclear when she met or married him. She told investigators that he "died on a pier" somewhere in New York in the mid-1950s. She and Flynn had a daughter, Peggy.